June 2, 2023 • 34 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
It is a verdict with Senator Ted Cruz Ben Ferguson
with you, and the Senate has sent the debt ceiling
package to Biden's desk with the default threat just days away.
In translation, the sausage has been made in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Senator, you just left that vote.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
We are doing this after the vote took place, and
I want to start off with asking you this. This
couldn't get done without Republicans in the Senate. If the
Republicans all stayed together, they wouldn't have gotten the sixty
votes needed. So which Republicans went with the Democrats to
get this deal done?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Well, Ben, that's exactly right. You and I are sitting
here at is eleven fifty two pm on Thursday night.
I just came from the Senate floor about a half
hour ago. We were voting on the debt ceiling, and
we were voting on this deal, the Joe Biden deal
that he negotiated with Kevin McCarthy. It's a lousy deal.
We've talked about it quite a bit on the podcast.
And the interesting thing is in the Senate, Republicans had
(01:02):
it entirely within our power to kill this in order
for this to pass, the Democrats had to get sixty votes.
If they didn't get sixty votes, it wouldn't pass, which
means if forty one Republicans stood together, we could have
killed it. Actually, five Democrats voted no tonight, so if
(01:23):
those five had held their ground, just thirty six Republicans
could have stood together and killed it. But sadly that
didn't happen. So who are the Republicans that voted for
this deal? Well, in alphabetical order, John Boseman from Arkansas,
shelleymore Capito from West Virginia, Susan Collins from Maine, John
(01:47):
Cornyn from Texas, Jony Ernst from Iowa, Chuck Grassley from Iowa,
John Hoven from North Dakota, Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, Jerry
Moran from Kansas, Mark Wayne Mullen from Oklahoma, Lisa Murkowski
(02:08):
from Alaska, Mitt Romney from Utah, Mike Rounds from South Dakota,
John Thune from South Dakota, Tom Tillis from North Carolina,
and Todd Young from Indiana. Those are the Republicans that
joined with Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden in adding four
(02:31):
trillion more in debt in exchange for ultimately what were
very small spending cuts.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
So the question I have to ask you, and I
know each of them probably had different reasons, but what
did they get out of it? I mean, that's a
long list. What was the reasoning for some of them
to just say, hey, screw it, we're going to go
along with us.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
What did they get in return for that vote?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Well, in my time in the Senate, Republican leadership always
votes with the Democrats to increase debt, to raise the
death ceiling. Usually they get nothing for it. Usually this
fight is Republican leadership of the Senate saying we must
increase the death ceiling and get absolutely zero for it.
(03:16):
So I guess, you know, we should pause and reflect
that at least there were some modest concessions in this
deal Joe Biden and the White House. Initially, Biden's position
was he wouldn't negotiate, he would make no concessions whatsoever.
That was so patently unreasonable that House conservatives forced House
(03:36):
leadership to negotiate for something, And so there were some
concessions in this. But look, in the Senate, Senate Republican
leadership's view is every time there's a fight over a
death ceiling, every time there's a fight over a continuing resolution,
every time there's a fight over an omnibus, one hundred
(03:57):
out of one hundred times, Republican leadership does what the
Democrats want. Look, in December, Mitch McConnell led the fight
to pass a massive omnibus that funded Chuck Schumer and
Nancy Pelosi's priorities. And I want you to think about
how insane that was. So December was one month after
(04:18):
the November elections, when Republicans had just won a majority
in the House. So we knew there was a House
majority coming in in January, and yet in December it
was Republican leadership of the Senate that said, before those
crazy Republicans show up and take a majority in the House,
let's fund the entirety of the federal government through September thirtieth.
(04:39):
Let's take nine months out of twenty twenty three off
the table. Now, mind you, this Republican majority of the
House only gets two years, So if you take nine
months of the first year off the table, it means
zero of the Republican spending priorities can get enacted into law.
Because Senate Republican leadership decided it was their job to
(05:01):
ensure that Nancy Pelosi, on our way out the door,
got another two trillion dollars in spending. So that's a
dynamic that has played out a long time, and sadly,
it's a dynamic that played out tonight.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I want to ask you about the Democrats because you
mentioned there were some Democrats that voted no.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
The question is why did they vote no?
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Ben for thirty five percent off center you mentioned. And
it's really infuriating when you hear that Republicans voted for this,
including the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. But there were
some Democrats that voted no. That may shock people. And
(06:53):
after there's a big vote like this, we always have
a large number of new listeners that come in. They say, hey,
I just want to know what happened, right. They may
not do politics every day, but it's important. They want
to know how we got here. So explain in detail
why these Democrats would actually vote no.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Well, the final vote was sixty three to thirty six,
So there were thirty six nos of the nose, five
of them were Democrats and thirty one of them were Republicans.
So the five Democrats who voted no were Elizabeth Warren,
Bernie Sanders, Jeff Berkeley, Ed Markey, and John Fetterman. They're
(07:34):
basically the far left wing of the Democrat caucus in
the Senate. Now.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I don't know for sure.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Why they voted no, other than I assumed they didn't
want to make any concessions. The fact that there were
even slight modest concessions that Biden made for the unabashed
socialist wing of the party, presumably those concessions were too much. So,
for example, there are modest work requirements that are added
(08:02):
to food stamps and welfare. I am assuming I don't
know this. You'd have to ask Elizabeth Warren, you'd have
to ask Bernie Sanders why they voted now, but I'm
assuming their view is that even the tiniest bit of
work is unacceptable. They want people not to have to
work at all, and able bodied adults to be able
to stay at home and receive welfare payments in perpetuity.
(08:24):
I don't understand that reasoning. I genuinely my brain doesn't
work that way. I was always raised in a house.
If you don't work, you don't eat, and that I
think work is good for you. I think work is
good for the soul. I think it builds responsibility. I
think it builds self respect. I think just being dependent
(08:47):
SAPs your dignity and SAPs SAPs your self respect. But
for the far left, for them, if they see value
and work, they never vote that way. It is possible
that one of the reasons they voted no is there
was a component of this bill that green lighted a
(09:08):
natural gas pipeline in West Virginia that was a payoff
to Joe Mansion. It is possible that the left wing
Democrats that was a reason they voted no. This was
a payoff. Remember last year, Joe Manchin voted for the
misnamed the deceitfully named Inflation Reduction Act. That was a
massive bill that was trillions in spending and subsidies for
(09:31):
Green New Deal policies and taxes on oil and gas,
and it hammered by the way coal miners in West
Virginia hammered oil and gas producers. It hurt West Virginia.
But Joe Manchin voted yes nonetheless, and part of the
Dally cut with the White House and Schumer is that
he would get this pipeline in West Virginia approved. Well,
(09:54):
this was the payoff, the payoff for his vote, and
so maybe that was part of the reason the Democrats
voted no. I don't know for sure. What I know
is five d's voted no, which means if we had
thirty six rs who voted no, this would have been
defeated tonight in the Senate.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
For people that don't listen all the time that may
be tuning in to this episode because of this vote,
there's a lot of people in the past that have
heard what you've said about this moving forward, as we
were keeping up dated last week and the week before,
But explain why specifically you said no and you voted no.
From your perspective as a center from Texas.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Well, it's very simple. This does not solve the problem,
and it doesn't even make a very significant improvement in
the problem. Let's step back for a minute. Let's look
at this with a broader perspective. Let's go back to
two thousand, two thousand, wasn't that long ago? It was
twenty three years ago, in the year two thousand. Do
you know where our national debt was in two thousand?
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Men?
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Nowhere near what it is now. And it's scary to
see how much the numbers gone up. I don't know
the exact number from two thousand, but it was nothing
remotely close to what we've accomplished now.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Well, that's accurate. And two thousand, the national debt was
five trillion dollars.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Five wow.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Now, in two thousand, a president that you and I
both worked for, George W. Bush, got elected. Bush served
for eight years. At the end of his eight year term,
the national debt had grown from five trillion dollars to
ten trillion dollars. In two thousand and eight, Barack Obama
became president. When he became president, the national debt was
(11:33):
ten trillion dollars. Eight years later, the national debt had
grown to twenty trillion dollars. So pause and reflect on
that for a moment. It had taken forty two presidents
over two hundred years to build five trillion dollars in debt.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
And then two presidents, one Republican and one Democrat, in
six steen years quadrupled the debt increased it from five
trillion dollars to twenty trillion dollars. Now, what happened next
twenty seventeen, the national debt is twenty trillion dollars. Where
(12:18):
are we today, thirty two trillion dollars. That's from twenty
seventeen to five and a half, less than six years
we've gone. Just go back to two thousand. From two
thousand to today, we've gone from five trillion to thirty
(12:38):
two trillion dollars. What we are doing is wildly irresponsible.
It is bankrupting our country. Now, let's go back to
twenty seventeen. Again, let's put this in perspective. Twenty seventeen,
total federal budget four trillion dollars. That's what the federal
government spent. What was total federal tax revenue three point
(13:01):
three trillion dollars. So we had, if you can do
some quick math, we had a seven hundred billion dollar deficit.
That was the amount that our expenditures exceeded revenues. Now
fast forward to today today, what we're looking at right
now is a total federal budget of about six point
(13:23):
six trillion dollars. Now, think about it. In six years,
we've gone from four trillion to six point six trillion, Like,
Holy cow, that is massive. Now, what's happened to tax revenues? Now,
remember in twenty seventeen we passed the historic tax cuts.
When we passed the tax cuts, all the Democrats, most
(13:43):
of the lying corporate media said, this tax cut is
going to cause federal tax revenues to plummet. It's going
to cause massive deficits, massive debt, this is disastrous for
the federal budget. Well, the nice thing about making predictions
is when time passes, you can see if those predictions
are true or false. We now know that every single
(14:05):
Democrat who said that was full of crap. We now
know that every media outlet that said that was telling
you something that is patently false. Why because every year
since twenty seventeen, after the tax cuts, every single year,
federal tax revenues went up and up and up, and
(14:27):
they're now just under five trillion dollars from three point
three trillion. That's a massive increase in federal tax revenue.
Why the economy grew. The tax cuts helped small businesses,
help job creators, created jobs, and that generated much more
tax revenue than did the higher rates before the tax cuts. Now,
(14:50):
getting nearly five trillion dollars in tax revenue is great
until you realize that the total budget is six point
six trill million dollars, so five doesn't get you there.
That's how we've gone from twenty trillion in debt to
thirty two trillion dollars in debt. And what does this
thing do. It green lights another four trillion dollars in debt.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
And if you.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Contrast it, look the House, what it initially passed, was
a bill that would that would raise the debt ceiling
by one and a half trillion dollars. That's a lot
of money, but it had real and meaningful cuts. It
had cuts that would have saved a total of four
point eight trillion dollars over ten years. So that was
(15:37):
the trade off the House made is is okay, we're
not going to solve all the problem, but let's have
real and meaningful cuts and we'll add one point five
trillion in debt. What this did is it inverted that ratio.
Instead of one point five trillion in debt, it's four
trillion dollars in debt, so it's more than double, it's
almost triple the debt. The initial deal was and what
(15:59):
is the spending. Well, on the face of it, they're
claiming it's two trillion dollars, which is less than half
the four point eight trillion the House had initially, But
in reality it's much less than that because the bulk
of that savings is from the out years, where the
spending cuts aren't mandatory, which means the Democrats are going
(16:19):
to ignore them and waive them. So at the end
of the day, Republicans are celebrating, at least Republican leadership
is celebrating adding four trillion in debt for what will
prove to be nominal spending reductions. And I promise you tonight,
right now in the White House, they are popping champagne.
(16:44):
That should scare the hell out of you.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
I want to ask you about the greenlighting and the
four trillion in new debt because I think it's so
important that people understand how do we just throw around
four trillion in new debt and what time period is
it's going to happen over before I get you to
in so that though we're talking about the economy, we're
talking about what's happening in this country.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
We've talked about interest rates. They more than doubled in
the last year.
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of four trillion in new debt. How quickly are we
(18:34):
going to spend that four trillion dollars? What's it going to?
What was the reasoning behind it?
Speaker 3 (18:41):
So that's in less than two years.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
So the initial bill, the quote limits, Save and Grow
bill that the House passed, increase the federal debt limit
by one point five trillion dollars. It was a fixed
dollar amount, and once you hit the additional one point
five trillion, you had to come back to Congress and
get author as AI to go up again. The value
of the debt ceiling is historically it's proven the only
(19:05):
effective lever point to force any meaningful fiscal restraint. Well,
this deal, it doesn't have a fixed dollar amount. There's
actually not an amount of debt that's authorized. What it
did instead is it suspended the debt ceiling altogether until
twenty twenty five, until after the election, until January twenty
(19:27):
twenty five. So based on current spending, that will be
in excess of four trillion dollars. But the reason they
did that is they did is the politicians didn't actually
want to vote for four trillion in debt. They just said,
oh no, no, we just suspended the debt ceiling, so
we didn't vote for a dollar amount. That's a way
to avoid responsibility for what you're voting for. It's also designed,
(19:50):
by the way, we're going to hit the death ceiling
again in January of twenty twenty five. Now, what will
have just happened. We will just had an election in
November of twenty twenty four. We will be in a
lame duck session with a bunch of retiring politicians going
out of office. And this is designed so that in
December of twenty twenty four, they're going to go back
(20:11):
and pass another massive spending bill, just like Mitch McConnell
and Nancy Pelosi did in December of last year. They're
going to do it again in December of twenty twenty
four trillions more, and they're going to say, if we
don't do that, we'll default on the debt. This is
designed to create another crisis, and they pick that date.
(20:32):
It's not by accident, by the way, we had an
amendment to shorten that time period, to shorten it to
November of this year. Of course, the Democrats all voted
against it. We had a bunch of different amendments one amendment.
So one of the things House leadership is pitching is
they say, well, there's some permitting reform here that's really important.
And the original version of the House Bill had what's
(20:55):
called the Rains Act, which is a bill I strongly
support that says any economic regulation that would impose one
hundred million dollars of cost or more on the economy
has to get an up down vote from Congress before
it goes into effect. It would be incredibly meaningful regulatory reform. Well,
of course the White House objected, and so that got
jettison from this. Instead, there are some modest permitting reforms
(21:21):
that are in this and regulatory reform of what's called
paygo to off the set of costly regulations. And guess
what the bill provides after it says that, it says,
oh well, the White House can wave them. So, in
other words, it has a provision that seems really tough.
Oh okay, this is actually that this will slow down
(21:42):
massive job killing regulations, except for the fact that they
wrote into the bill the White House can wave that reform. Now.
Mike Lee, my good friend, senator from Utah, had an
amendment to strike the waiver, to say, Okay, if you
actually have meaningful regulatory reform, don't get Joe Biden the
ability to waive it. And guess what, every Democrat voted No.
(22:03):
They said, nope, we want the waiver. And every single
amendment we considered was voted down. That was by design.
They wanted to change nothing.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Because there was a lot of excitement about the amendments.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
I mean, Mike Lee went on TV several others saying
I'm gonna do in Paul, etc. You know, we're gonna
do these amendments, and we're gonna hold this thing and
force their hand. You're saying that Basically none of that worked.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
None of that worked, and none of that worked because
Number one Schumer whipped the Democrats to make sure every
amendment was defeated, and McConnell whipped the Republicans to make
sure every amendment was defeated. Look, the final margin was
sixty three to thirty six, and at some level that's
a little bit better than I had expected. But it
might have even been we might have gotten to thirty
(22:53):
nine or forty knows. What they were not gonna let
happen was forty one knows because forty one nos kills this.
So at some level leadership in both sides was fine
with people voting no. If we'd gotten the forty one knows,
Schumer would have gone to the five Democrats voting no
and twisted someone's arm to switch their voter. McConnell would
(23:14):
have gone.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
In other words, you would have got a pipeline like
in West Virginia to buy a vote.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Basically, well, and I have to say, really, the most
amusing moment on the Senate floor was an amendment about
the pipeline. So Joe Manchin, as part of the disastrous
so called Inflation Reduction Act that actually increased inflation and
had nearly two trillion in spending last year, he got
(23:38):
an agreement from Biden and Schumer to approve this natural
gas pipeline in West Virginia. And it didn't get done
last year, but it's rolled into this deal now. And
Tim Kaine, liberal Democrat from Virginia, introduced an amendment to
(23:59):
strip out Joe Mansions pipeline in West Virginia. And the
vote was very interesting because the more liberal Democrats voted
for Tim Kaine's amendment because they hate energy. They hate
natural gas, they hate oil, they hate any American energy
produced here unless it's windmills or solar. And what was
(24:22):
interesting is several Republicans ended up voting for it as well.
Mike Lee voted for it, Ran Paul voted for it,
and a bunch of the left wing Democrats stayed silent,
and they were scared how to vote because they didn't
want to vote for a natural gas pipeline, but they
knew that this was the deal cut with Joe Manchin
and they couldn't undercut that deal. And in particular, they
(24:44):
were terrified if any amendment got adopted, this bill would
get set back to the House. If we amended, it
goes back to the House, the House has to come
back and vote on it then. And so as we
went through the vote, the clerk is calling calling the senators,
and the clerk call the centers alphabetically, and a whole
bunch of the Democrat centers. Maizie Herono, one of the
(25:05):
most liberal Democrats there is. When they called Missarno, she
stayed silent. She was sitting right there. She just didn't vote,
and it went alphabetically through. Now Mike Lee was leaning
on me hard, saying, vote yes for Tim Kaine's amendment.
Let's number one, deny Joe Manchin the benefit of the
(25:25):
corrupt deal he cut with Schumer. And he said number two,
if we actually adopt this amendment, this could tank the
whole bill. And I told him, I said, Mike, look,
I'm from Texas. We produce a lot of.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Oil and gas in Texas.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
I am very hard pressed to vote against any oil
pipeline or natural gas pipeline. That's just there are millions
of jobs that depend on oil and gas, and I
believe in American energy. But I did say, look, the
point about denying mansion the benefit of the corrupt deal,
that's real. And if this could take this entire deal down,
(26:02):
I'd be enthusiastically yes. So I told Mike, I said,
I'll tell you what, I'll refrain from voting. I'll just
sit back and see what happens. I won't vote early.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
And so we went there for pure They don't understand
how it works. At first.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
You vote like when you're saying alphabetically, if you don't
say anything, you don't lose the right to vote.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
At the end, right, you can kind of see how
it plays out.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Right. So typically a vote is fifteen minutes, although they
usually run much longer than that, and there's a clerk
who's sitting there reading from this long skinny card. The
long skinny card has the names of every senator on it.
And this is old school. So the House has like
electronic voting where you put in a card, you push
a button and it lights up. The Senate is still
(26:46):
in the eighteen hundreds. The Senate, we still vote with
a clerk who calls your name and you either say
out loud yay or nay, or more typically, you just
do thumbs up or thumbs down. You look him in
the eye, and they will they will repeat. So they'll
be like mister Cruse, and you'll look at him and
you'll do a thumbs up and they'll go, mister Cruz I.
(27:08):
And with a pencil they will mark you as an eye.
And so each person they're marking with a pencil as
the votes are cast. But when they call your name,
you don't have to vote. So they call mister Cruz
and you stay silent. They go to the next name,
they go to the next name, and so you know,
(27:28):
I decided, all right, I'm going to sit back. And
it was hysterical watching the Democrats skirm squirm because they
were like, oh, no, if this thing's about to pass,
we're all going to have to vote against it, and
our crazy environmentalists to be mad at us if if
we vote against killing a natural gas pipeline. Now, at
the end of the day, very few Republicans were able
(27:51):
to vote strategically, so a whole bunch of Republicans voted no, no, no, no, no,
including Mitch McConnell right at the outset No. So, like
what Mike was trying to do, if we actually had
effective leadership on our side, we might have whipped everyone
to vote for Kine's amendment to strip out Mansions deal.
But our leadership didn't want to do that because then the.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Democrats they're gonna ask you why though, like you would
think that would be a no brainer to say, you're
not gonna get these where, you're not gonna get these deals,
you're not gonna get to hook people up this way.
And yet here the Republicans are and the leadership going yeah, no,
we kind of we're gonna let this happen. In fact,
we're gonna protect it to make sure it happens. This
is what drives the American people center insane as obviously
(28:34):
you know this.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
So Ben I genuinely don't know. But what happened. So
we got to the end of the voting alphabetically and
they read it out and there were over fifty one knows.
And so then two things happened. All the Democrats who
hadn't voted, they immediately rushed to vote yes. So they
(28:55):
once it was clear that Cain was going to be defeated,
that it was Republicans who were going to defeat it,
a whole bunch of Democrats rushed in and voted yes.
See yay, I'm a crazy environmentalist. And secondly, actually most
of the RS, several of the d's who had voted
no initially switched their vote to a yes once it
(29:18):
was clear it was going to be defeated. And most
of the RS, most of the Republicans who had voted yes,
switched their vote to a no once it was clear
it was going to be defeated as well. So but
there was a moment so Democrat leadership was whipping against
the Cane amendment was whipping in favor of the Joe
Mansion pipeline. So Schumer voted with Joe Manchin. Schumer's whips
(29:41):
voted for Joe Manchin. So one of the more liberal
Democrats who's part of Schumer's whip team voted for it.
I walked up and said, all right, tell me, have
you ever voted for a pipeline before in your life?
And he kind of laughed and said no. And I'm like, well,
you know, they're forty nine other states. We could use
some pipelines too. How about the rest of us? This
is their love for any other state? And he just
(30:03):
laughed And the answer, of course, is no. But it
was an amusing moment on the floor how nervous Democrats
were that Republicans might actually support this amendment and strip
out the deal with Mansion, which would mean it would
force all of them to vote for the pipeline. Ultimately,
they didn't have to do that, but we came there
(30:23):
was a moment where it looked like it might.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
You mentioned earlier there's going to be another showdown that's
going to happen later this year, and I want to
ask you about that. I also want to ask you
about the debt. How big of an issue you think
this is going to be and how big of an
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Speaker 1 (32:03):
Com slash verdict.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Senator, there's another showdown that's going to happen, and people
are gonna roll their eyes and they're going to say,
here we go again. How big of an issue should
that showdown become for the twenty twenty four presidential And
how big of an issue do you think this debt
that we are in as a nation right now? Should
this be the top issue in the presidential election in
(32:27):
your opinion? And I'm talking about both sides now, I'm
saying in general for all American voters, how concerning of
an issue should this rank?
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Well, Look, every conceivable presidential candidate in the Senate voted
no on this deal. In the Senate. The only two
Democrats who might conceivably run or Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders.
They both voted no. Tim Scott, who's the only Senator
(32:55):
currently running, he voted no. Any others who had previously run,
I voted no. Rand Paul voted no. Mark or Rubio
voted no. Lindsey Graham voted no. Other people who might
conceivably run. Tom Cotton voted no. Josh Holly voted no.
(33:16):
Like anyone thinking of running for president votes against this deal.
By the way, Barack Obama, when he was in the Senate,
voted consistently against raising the debt ceiling when George W.
Bush was president and gave speeches on the Senate floor
about how the fact that we had to raise the
debt ceiling back when the debt was down below five
trillion dollars, how it showed how irresponsible the Bush administration was.
(33:39):
So that dynamic is a very real dynamic if you
look at the current presidential contenders. Obviously Joe Biden supports this,
will sign this, and will trumpet this as a big victory.
If Donald Trump said anything about this deal, I have
not seen it. I don't know if he's comm editor
or not, but if he did aware of it, So
(34:03):
at the end of the day, we'll see how big
an issue this is in the presidential debate. The incumbent
president supported it enthusiastically, and uh, you know, we're headed
towards thirty six trillion dollars in debt.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
It's incredible. Don't forget.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
If you are a new due verdict today, make sure
you hit that follow button. If you are listening on
Apple many other places where you may be listening, they'll.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Either have follow.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
The subscribe or auto download makes you select that you'll
get this podcast every day that we published Monday, Wednesday
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(34:52):
write it's a five star review the Senator and I
will see you back here in a couple of days.
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
It is a verdict with Senator Ted Cruz Ben Ferguson
with you, and the Senate has sent the debt ceiling
package to Biden's desk with the default threat just days away.
In translation, the sausage has been made in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Senator, you just left that vote.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
We are doing this after the vote took place, and
I want to start off with asking you this. This
couldn't get done without Republicans in the Senate. If the
Republicans all stayed together, they wouldn't have gotten the sixty
votes needed. So which Republicans went with the Democrats to
get this deal done?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Well, Ben, that's exactly right. You and I are sitting
here at is eleven fifty two pm on Thursday night.
I just came from the Senate floor about a half
hour ago. We were voting on the debt ceiling, and
we were voting on this deal, the Joe Biden deal
that he negotiated with Kevin McCarthy. It's a lousy deal.
We've talked about it quite a bit on the podcast.
And the interesting thing is in the Senate, Republicans had
(01:02):
it entirely within our power to kill this in order
for this to pass, the Democrats had to get sixty votes.
If they didn't get sixty votes, it wouldn't pass, which
means if forty one Republicans stood together, we could have
killed it. Actually, five Democrats voted no tonight, so if
(01:23):
those five had held their ground, just thirty six Republicans
could have stood together and killed it. But sadly that
didn't happen. So who are the Republicans that voted for
this deal? Well, in alphabetical order, John Boseman from Arkansas,
shelleymore Capito from West Virginia, Susan Collins from Maine, John
(01:47):
Cornyn from Texas, Jony Ernst from Iowa, Chuck Grassley from Iowa,
John Hoven from North Dakota, Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, Jerry
Moran from Kansas, Mark Wayne Mullen from Oklahoma, Lisa Murkowski
(02:08):
from Alaska, Mitt Romney from Utah, Mike Rounds from South Dakota,
John Thune from South Dakota, Tom Tillis from North Carolina,
and Todd Young from Indiana. Those are the Republicans that
joined with Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden in adding four
(02:31):
trillion more in debt in exchange for ultimately what were
very small spending cuts.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
So the question I have to ask you, and I
know each of them probably had different reasons, but what
did they get out of it? I mean, that's a
long list. What was the reasoning for some of them
to just say, hey, screw it, we're going to go
along with us.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
What did they get in return for that vote?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Well, in my time in the Senate, Republican leadership always
votes with the Democrats to increase debt, to raise the
death ceiling. Usually they get nothing for it. Usually this
fight is Republican leadership of the Senate saying we must
increase the death ceiling and get absolutely zero for it.
(03:16):
So I guess, you know, we should pause and reflect
that at least there were some modest concessions in this
deal Joe Biden and the White House. Initially, Biden's position
was he wouldn't negotiate, he would make no concessions whatsoever.
That was so patently unreasonable that House conservatives forced House
(03:36):
leadership to negotiate for something, And so there were some
concessions in this. But look, in the Senate, Senate Republican
leadership's view is every time there's a fight over a
death ceiling, every time there's a fight over a continuing resolution,
every time there's a fight over an omnibus, one hundred
(03:57):
out of one hundred times, Republican leadership does what the
Democrats want. Look, in December, Mitch McConnell led the fight
to pass a massive omnibus that funded Chuck Schumer and
Nancy Pelosi's priorities. And I want you to think about
how insane that was. So December was one month after
(04:18):
the November elections, when Republicans had just won a majority
in the House. So we knew there was a House
majority coming in in January, and yet in December it
was Republican leadership of the Senate that said, before those
crazy Republicans show up and take a majority in the House,
let's fund the entirety of the federal government through September thirtieth.
(04:39):
Let's take nine months out of twenty twenty three off
the table. Now, mind you, this Republican majority of the
House only gets two years, So if you take nine
months of the first year off the table, it means
zero of the Republican spending priorities can get enacted into law.
Because Senate Republican leadership decided it was their job to
(05:01):
ensure that Nancy Pelosi, on our way out the door,
got another two trillion dollars in spending. So that's a
dynamic that has played out a long time, and sadly,
it's a dynamic that played out tonight.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I want to ask you about the Democrats because you
mentioned there were some Democrats that voted no.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
The question is why did they vote no?
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Ben for thirty five percent off center you mentioned. And
it's really infuriating when you hear that Republicans voted for this,
including the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. But there were
some Democrats that voted no. That may shock people. And
(06:53):
after there's a big vote like this, we always have
a large number of new listeners that come in. They say, hey,
I just want to know what happened, right. They may
not do politics every day, but it's important. They want
to know how we got here. So explain in detail
why these Democrats would actually vote no.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Well, the final vote was sixty three to thirty six,
So there were thirty six nos of the nose, five
of them were Democrats and thirty one of them were Republicans.
So the five Democrats who voted no were Elizabeth Warren,
Bernie Sanders, Jeff Berkeley, Ed Markey, and John Fetterman. They're
(07:34):
basically the far left wing of the Democrat caucus in
the Senate. Now.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I don't know for sure.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Why they voted no, other than I assumed they didn't
want to make any concessions. The fact that there were
even slight modest concessions that Biden made for the unabashed
socialist wing of the party, presumably those concessions were too much. So,
for example, there are modest work requirements that are added
(08:02):
to food stamps and welfare. I am assuming I don't
know this. You'd have to ask Elizabeth Warren, you'd have
to ask Bernie Sanders why they voted now, but I'm
assuming their view is that even the tiniest bit of
work is unacceptable. They want people not to have to
work at all, and able bodied adults to be able
to stay at home and receive welfare payments in perpetuity.
(08:24):
I don't understand that reasoning. I genuinely my brain doesn't
work that way. I was always raised in a house.
If you don't work, you don't eat, and that I
think work is good for you. I think work is
good for the soul. I think it builds responsibility. I
think it builds self respect. I think just being dependent
(08:47):
SAPs your dignity and SAPs SAPs your self respect. But
for the far left, for them, if they see value
and work, they never vote that way. It is possible
that one of the reasons they voted no is there
was a component of this bill that green lighted a
(09:08):
natural gas pipeline in West Virginia that was a payoff
to Joe Mansion. It is possible that the left wing
Democrats that was a reason they voted no. This was
a payoff. Remember last year, Joe Manchin voted for the
misnamed the deceitfully named Inflation Reduction Act. That was a
massive bill that was trillions in spending and subsidies for
(09:31):
Green New Deal policies and taxes on oil and gas,
and it hammered by the way coal miners in West
Virginia hammered oil and gas producers. It hurt West Virginia.
But Joe Manchin voted yes nonetheless, and part of the
Dally cut with the White House and Schumer is that
he would get this pipeline in West Virginia approved. Well,
(09:54):
this was the payoff, the payoff for his vote, and
so maybe that was part of the reason the Democrats
voted no. I don't know for sure. What I know
is five d's voted no, which means if we had
thirty six rs who voted no, this would have been
defeated tonight in the Senate.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
For people that don't listen all the time that may
be tuning in to this episode because of this vote,
there's a lot of people in the past that have
heard what you've said about this moving forward, as we
were keeping up dated last week and the week before,
But explain why specifically you said no and you voted no.
From your perspective as a center from Texas.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Well, it's very simple. This does not solve the problem,
and it doesn't even make a very significant improvement in
the problem. Let's step back for a minute. Let's look
at this with a broader perspective. Let's go back to
two thousand, two thousand, wasn't that long ago? It was
twenty three years ago, in the year two thousand. Do
you know where our national debt was in two thousand?
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Men?
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Nowhere near what it is now. And it's scary to
see how much the numbers gone up. I don't know
the exact number from two thousand, but it was nothing
remotely close to what we've accomplished now.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Well, that's accurate. And two thousand, the national debt was
five trillion dollars.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Five wow.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Now, in two thousand, a president that you and I
both worked for, George W. Bush, got elected. Bush served
for eight years. At the end of his eight year term,
the national debt had grown from five trillion dollars to
ten trillion dollars. In two thousand and eight, Barack Obama
became president. When he became president, the national debt was
(11:33):
ten trillion dollars. Eight years later, the national debt had
grown to twenty trillion dollars. So pause and reflect on
that for a moment. It had taken forty two presidents
over two hundred years to build five trillion dollars in debt.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
And then two presidents, one Republican and one Democrat, in
six steen years quadrupled the debt increased it from five
trillion dollars to twenty trillion dollars. Now, what happened next
twenty seventeen, the national debt is twenty trillion dollars. Where
(12:18):
are we today, thirty two trillion dollars. That's from twenty
seventeen to five and a half, less than six years
we've gone. Just go back to two thousand. From two
thousand to today, we've gone from five trillion to thirty
(12:38):
two trillion dollars. What we are doing is wildly irresponsible.
It is bankrupting our country. Now, let's go back to
twenty seventeen. Again, let's put this in perspective. Twenty seventeen,
total federal budget four trillion dollars. That's what the federal
government spent. What was total federal tax revenue three point
(13:01):
three trillion dollars. So we had, if you can do
some quick math, we had a seven hundred billion dollar deficit.
That was the amount that our expenditures exceeded revenues. Now
fast forward to today today, what we're looking at right
now is a total federal budget of about six point
(13:23):
six trillion dollars. Now, think about it. In six years,
we've gone from four trillion to six point six trillion, Like,
Holy cow, that is massive. Now, what's happened to tax revenues? Now,
remember in twenty seventeen we passed the historic tax cuts.
When we passed the tax cuts, all the Democrats, most
(13:43):
of the lying corporate media said, this tax cut is
going to cause federal tax revenues to plummet. It's going
to cause massive deficits, massive debt, this is disastrous for
the federal budget. Well, the nice thing about making predictions
is when time passes, you can see if those predictions
are true or false. We now know that every single
(14:05):
Democrat who said that was full of crap. We now
know that every media outlet that said that was telling
you something that is patently false. Why because every year
since twenty seventeen, after the tax cuts, every single year,
federal tax revenues went up and up and up, and
(14:27):
they're now just under five trillion dollars from three point
three trillion. That's a massive increase in federal tax revenue.
Why the economy grew. The tax cuts helped small businesses,
help job creators, created jobs, and that generated much more
tax revenue than did the higher rates before the tax cuts. Now,
(14:50):
getting nearly five trillion dollars in tax revenue is great
until you realize that the total budget is six point
six trill million dollars, so five doesn't get you there.
That's how we've gone from twenty trillion in debt to
thirty two trillion dollars in debt. And what does this
thing do. It green lights another four trillion dollars in debt.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
And if you.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Contrast it, look the House, what it initially passed, was
a bill that would that would raise the debt ceiling
by one and a half trillion dollars. That's a lot
of money, but it had real and meaningful cuts. It
had cuts that would have saved a total of four
point eight trillion dollars over ten years. So that was
(15:37):
the trade off the House made is is okay, we're
not going to solve all the problem, but let's have
real and meaningful cuts and we'll add one point five
trillion in debt. What this did is it inverted that ratio.
Instead of one point five trillion in debt, it's four
trillion dollars in debt, so it's more than double, it's
almost triple the debt. The initial deal was and what
(15:59):
is the spending. Well, on the face of it, they're
claiming it's two trillion dollars, which is less than half
the four point eight trillion the House had initially, But
in reality it's much less than that because the bulk
of that savings is from the out years, where the
spending cuts aren't mandatory, which means the Democrats are going
(16:19):
to ignore them and waive them. So at the end
of the day, Republicans are celebrating, at least Republican leadership
is celebrating adding four trillion in debt for what will
prove to be nominal spending reductions. And I promise you tonight,
right now in the White House, they are popping champagne.
(16:44):
That should scare the hell out of you.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
I want to ask you about the greenlighting and the
four trillion in new debt because I think it's so
important that people understand how do we just throw around
four trillion in new debt and what time period is
it's going to happen over before I get you to
in so that though we're talking about the economy, we're
talking about what's happening in this country.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
We've talked about interest rates. They more than doubled in
the last year.
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seven the number four gold IRA. Senator, you mentioned greenlighting
of four trillion in new debt. How quickly are we
(18:34):
going to spend that four trillion dollars? What's it going to?
What was the reasoning behind it?
Speaker 3 (18:41):
So that's in less than two years.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
So the initial bill, the quote limits, Save and Grow
bill that the House passed, increase the federal debt limit
by one point five trillion dollars. It was a fixed
dollar amount, and once you hit the additional one point
five trillion, you had to come back to Congress and
get author as AI to go up again. The value
of the debt ceiling is historically it's proven the only
(19:05):
effective lever point to force any meaningful fiscal restraint. Well,
this deal, it doesn't have a fixed dollar amount. There's
actually not an amount of debt that's authorized. What it
did instead is it suspended the debt ceiling altogether until
twenty twenty five, until after the election, until January twenty
(19:27):
twenty five. So based on current spending, that will be
in excess of four trillion dollars. But the reason they
did that is they did is the politicians didn't actually
want to vote for four trillion in debt. They just said,
oh no, no, we just suspended the debt ceiling, so
we didn't vote for a dollar amount. That's a way
to avoid responsibility for what you're voting for. It's also designed,
(19:50):
by the way, we're going to hit the death ceiling
again in January of twenty twenty five. Now, what will
have just happened. We will just had an election in
November of twenty twenty four. We will be in a
lame duck session with a bunch of retiring politicians going
out of office. And this is designed so that in
December of twenty twenty four, they're going to go back
(20:11):
and pass another massive spending bill, just like Mitch McConnell
and Nancy Pelosi did in December of last year. They're
going to do it again in December of twenty twenty
four trillions more, and they're going to say, if we
don't do that, we'll default on the debt. This is
designed to create another crisis, and they pick that date.
(20:32):
It's not by accident, by the way, we had an
amendment to shorten that time period, to shorten it to
November of this year. Of course, the Democrats all voted
against it. We had a bunch of different amendments one amendment.
So one of the things House leadership is pitching is
they say, well, there's some permitting reform here that's really important.
And the original version of the House Bill had what's
(20:55):
called the Rains Act, which is a bill I strongly
support that says any economic regulation that would impose one
hundred million dollars of cost or more on the economy
has to get an up down vote from Congress before
it goes into effect. It would be incredibly meaningful regulatory reform. Well,
of course the White House objected, and so that got
jettison from this. Instead, there are some modest permitting reforms
(21:21):
that are in this and regulatory reform of what's called
paygo to off the set of costly regulations. And guess
what the bill provides after it says that, it says,
oh well, the White House can wave them. So, in
other words, it has a provision that seems really tough.
Oh okay, this is actually that this will slow down
(21:42):
massive job killing regulations, except for the fact that they
wrote into the bill the White House can wave that reform. Now.
Mike Lee, my good friend, senator from Utah, had an
amendment to strike the waiver, to say, Okay, if you
actually have meaningful regulatory reform, don't get Joe Biden the
ability to waive it. And guess what, every Democrat voted No.
(22:03):
They said, nope, we want the waiver. And every single
amendment we considered was voted down. That was by design.
They wanted to change nothing.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Because there was a lot of excitement about the amendments.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
I mean, Mike Lee went on TV several others saying
I'm gonna do in Paul, etc. You know, we're gonna
do these amendments, and we're gonna hold this thing and
force their hand. You're saying that Basically none of that worked.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
None of that worked, and none of that worked because
Number one Schumer whipped the Democrats to make sure every
amendment was defeated, and McConnell whipped the Republicans to make
sure every amendment was defeated. Look, the final margin was
sixty three to thirty six, and at some level that's
a little bit better than I had expected. But it
might have even been we might have gotten to thirty
(22:53):
nine or forty knows. What they were not gonna let
happen was forty one knows because forty one nos kills this.
So at some level leadership in both sides was fine
with people voting no. If we'd gotten the forty one knows,
Schumer would have gone to the five Democrats voting no
and twisted someone's arm to switch their voter. McConnell would
(23:14):
have gone.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
In other words, you would have got a pipeline like
in West Virginia to buy a vote.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Basically, well, and I have to say, really, the most
amusing moment on the Senate floor was an amendment about
the pipeline. So Joe Manchin, as part of the disastrous
so called Inflation Reduction Act that actually increased inflation and
had nearly two trillion in spending last year, he got
(23:38):
an agreement from Biden and Schumer to approve this natural
gas pipeline in West Virginia. And it didn't get done
last year, but it's rolled into this deal now. And
Tim Kaine, liberal Democrat from Virginia, introduced an amendment to
(23:59):
strip out Joe Mansions pipeline in West Virginia. And the
vote was very interesting because the more liberal Democrats voted
for Tim Kaine's amendment because they hate energy. They hate
natural gas, they hate oil, they hate any American energy
produced here unless it's windmills or solar. And what was
(24:22):
interesting is several Republicans ended up voting for it as well.
Mike Lee voted for it, Ran Paul voted for it,
and a bunch of the left wing Democrats stayed silent,
and they were scared how to vote because they didn't
want to vote for a natural gas pipeline, but they
knew that this was the deal cut with Joe Manchin
and they couldn't undercut that deal. And in particular, they
(24:44):
were terrified if any amendment got adopted, this bill would
get set back to the House. If we amended, it
goes back to the House, the House has to come
back and vote on it then. And so as we
went through the vote, the clerk is calling calling the senators,
and the clerk call the centers alphabetically, and a whole
bunch of the Democrat centers. Maizie Herono, one of the
(25:05):
most liberal Democrats there is. When they called Missarno, she
stayed silent. She was sitting right there. She just didn't vote,
and it went alphabetically through. Now Mike Lee was leaning
on me hard, saying, vote yes for Tim Kaine's amendment.
Let's number one, deny Joe Manchin the benefit of the
(25:25):
corrupt deal he cut with Schumer. And he said number two,
if we actually adopt this amendment, this could tank the
whole bill. And I told him, I said, Mike, look,
I'm from Texas. We produce a lot of.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Oil and gas in Texas.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
I am very hard pressed to vote against any oil
pipeline or natural gas pipeline. That's just there are millions
of jobs that depend on oil and gas, and I
believe in American energy. But I did say, look, the
point about denying mansion the benefit of the corrupt deal,
that's real. And if this could take this entire deal down,
(26:02):
I'd be enthusiastically yes. So I told Mike, I said,
I'll tell you what, I'll refrain from voting. I'll just
sit back and see what happens. I won't vote early.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
And so we went there for pure They don't understand
how it works. At first.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
You vote like when you're saying alphabetically, if you don't
say anything, you don't lose the right to vote.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
At the end, right, you can kind of see how
it plays out.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Right. So typically a vote is fifteen minutes, although they
usually run much longer than that, and there's a clerk
who's sitting there reading from this long skinny card. The
long skinny card has the names of every senator on it.
And this is old school. So the House has like
electronic voting where you put in a card, you push
a button and it lights up. The Senate is still
(26:46):
in the eighteen hundreds. The Senate, we still vote with
a clerk who calls your name and you either say
out loud yay or nay, or more typically, you just
do thumbs up or thumbs down. You look him in
the eye, and they will they will repeat. So they'll
be like mister Cruse, and you'll look at him and
you'll do a thumbs up and they'll go, mister Cruz I.
(27:08):
And with a pencil they will mark you as an eye.
And so each person they're marking with a pencil as
the votes are cast. But when they call your name,
you don't have to vote. So they call mister Cruz
and you stay silent. They go to the next name,
they go to the next name, and so you know,
(27:28):
I decided, all right, I'm going to sit back. And
it was hysterical watching the Democrats skirm squirm because they
were like, oh, no, if this thing's about to pass,
we're all going to have to vote against it, and
our crazy environmentalists to be mad at us if if
we vote against killing a natural gas pipeline. Now, at
the end of the day, very few Republicans were able
(27:51):
to vote strategically, so a whole bunch of Republicans voted no, no, no, no, no,
including Mitch McConnell right at the outset No. So, like
what Mike was trying to do, if we actually had
effective leadership on our side, we might have whipped everyone
to vote for Kine's amendment to strip out Mansions deal.
But our leadership didn't want to do that because then the.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Democrats they're gonna ask you why though, like you would
think that would be a no brainer to say, you're
not gonna get these where, you're not gonna get these deals,
you're not gonna get to hook people up this way.
And yet here the Republicans are and the leadership going yeah, no,
we kind of we're gonna let this happen. In fact,
we're gonna protect it to make sure it happens. This
is what drives the American people center insane as obviously
(28:34):
you know this.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
So Ben I genuinely don't know. But what happened. So
we got to the end of the voting alphabetically and
they read it out and there were over fifty one knows.
And so then two things happened. All the Democrats who
hadn't voted, they immediately rushed to vote yes. So they
(28:55):
once it was clear that Cain was going to be defeated,
that it was Republicans who were going to defeat it,
a whole bunch of Democrats rushed in and voted yes.
See yay, I'm a crazy environmentalist. And secondly, actually most
of the RS, several of the d's who had voted
no initially switched their vote to a yes once it
(29:18):
was clear it was going to be defeated. And most
of the RS, most of the Republicans who had voted yes,
switched their vote to a no once it was clear
it was going to be defeated as well. So but
there was a moment so Democrat leadership was whipping against
the Cane amendment was whipping in favor of the Joe
Mansion pipeline. So Schumer voted with Joe Manchin. Schumer's whips
(29:41):
voted for Joe Manchin. So one of the more liberal
Democrats who's part of Schumer's whip team voted for it.
I walked up and said, all right, tell me, have
you ever voted for a pipeline before in your life?
And he kind of laughed and said no. And I'm like, well,
you know, they're forty nine other states. We could use
some pipelines too. How about the rest of us? This
is their love for any other state? And he just
(30:03):
laughed And the answer, of course, is no. But it
was an amusing moment on the floor how nervous Democrats
were that Republicans might actually support this amendment and strip
out the deal with Mansion, which would mean it would
force all of them to vote for the pipeline. Ultimately,
they didn't have to do that, but we came there
(30:23):
was a moment where it looked like it might.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
You mentioned earlier there's going to be another showdown that's
going to happen later this year, and I want to
ask you about that. I also want to ask you
about the debt. How big of an issue you think
this is going to be and how big of an
issue should it be in the twenty twenty four presidential election.
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Speaker 1 (32:03):
Com slash verdict.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Senator, there's another showdown that's going to happen, and people
are gonna roll their eyes and they're going to say,
here we go again. How big of an issue should
that showdown become for the twenty twenty four presidential And
how big of an issue do you think this debt
that we are in as a nation right now? Should
this be the top issue in the presidential election in
(32:27):
your opinion? And I'm talking about both sides now, I'm
saying in general for all American voters, how concerning of
an issue should this rank?
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Well, Look, every conceivable presidential candidate in the Senate voted
no on this deal. In the Senate. The only two
Democrats who might conceivably run or Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders.
They both voted no. Tim Scott, who's the only Senator
(32:55):
currently running, he voted no. Any others who had previously run,
I voted no. Rand Paul voted no. Mark or Rubio
voted no. Lindsey Graham voted no. Other people who might
conceivably run. Tom Cotton voted no. Josh Holly voted no.
(33:16):
Like anyone thinking of running for president votes against this deal.
By the way, Barack Obama, when he was in the Senate,
voted consistently against raising the debt ceiling when George W.
Bush was president and gave speeches on the Senate floor
about how the fact that we had to raise the
debt ceiling back when the debt was down below five
trillion dollars, how it showed how irresponsible the Bush administration was.
(33:39):
So that dynamic is a very real dynamic if you
look at the current presidential contenders. Obviously Joe Biden supports this,
will sign this, and will trumpet this as a big victory.
If Donald Trump said anything about this deal, I have
not seen it. I don't know if he's comm editor
or not, but if he did aware of it, So
(34:03):
at the end of the day, we'll see how big
an issue this is in the presidential debate. The incumbent
president supported it enthusiastically, and uh, you know, we're headed
towards thirty six trillion dollars in debt.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
It's incredible. Don't forget.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
If you are a new due verdict today, make sure
you hit that follow button. If you are listening on
Apple many other places where you may be listening, they'll.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Either have follow.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
The subscribe or auto download makes you select that you'll
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and Fridays, also when there's other breaking news. The Centator
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so we will make sure that you guys get great
breaking news each and every day. So subscribe here, follow
(34:52):
write it's a five star review the Senator and I
will see you back here in a couple of days.
Host
Ben Ferguson
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